What are the hard things AI can't do yet, then? Are you sure we shouldn't rather spend time getting better at, say, playing the piano?

Assuming we're allowed to prioritize that in a world where the rich have all the money.

(Looking at the local flow of money, I can't avoid the conclusion that my wages come indirectly mostly from the building of an extreme luxury product for an extremely rich person.)

They release women from housekeeping... to workplaces.

There are 4 differences between my home and that of my grandparents from one century ago, which indeed have reduced significantly the time spent with household chores:

1. Washing machine

2. Vacuum cleaner

3. Microwave oven

4. Electric refrigerator (but they had a cold underground cellar, while I no longer have such luxuries)

There are also various modern tools that are not used in the normal day-to-day life, but only when incidents happen, which require repairs, for example an electric drill or reciprocating saw, or a soldering iron, or an electric sewing machine (but my grandparents had a mechanical Singer sewing machine, which did the same job, only with more effort) and sometimes, but not often, I prepare some kind of food for which an electric mixer accelerates enough the preparation to compensate for the time spent with assembling, disassembling and washing the mixer.

While other modern inventions, like computers, are very important to me, none of them has reduced the amount of work that must be done in my home (I never felt the need for an automatic dishwasher, because I never let them accumulate, I wash them instantly after use, even while cooking, because I eat only food that I cook myself from raw ingredients).

While our time working at home has definitely gone down, our time at work hasn’t though. The point is our employers just expect more, and the benefits of whatever new efficiency is gained, if any, are not passed onto those at the bottom or middle.

> that almost all Amish use one.

There are small pedal powered ones. I am sure you can rig a horse driven washing machine...

> The real problem with AI is that the productivity benefits are focused with the owners and not the workers.

What makes you think so? What evidence do we have one way or another?

Who am I to judge what other people decide to do with their freetime. It's not like lurking on HN is morally superior.

The argument against "they can do something else with their lives" is not a strawman though.

In a hypothetical end state where the people who own fully-automated production of everything, and need maybe few millions employed to support and guard that production, the "freed" people are not going to do something better with their lives.

> Why do humans need to work to exist?

What make life worth living? Is it love? Is it beauty? Is it the sense of having agency?

Sadly, we are not smart enough to know until it is taken away.....

Lets first have actual problem instead of trying to stop data center buildout or squatting on data.

Let’s build abundance first and solve inequality later. Instead people are keen to prevent abundance and keep everyone level by keeping everyone poor.

You may however notice that your existence might be cut short if you don't have access to food, shelter, medical treatments, because "the system" eventually has no incentive to provide for you anymore, because your labor is now worthless to capital.

You do cease to exist once you don't get access to food, water or health care long enough.

Think just a little past the most direct consequence - let me rephrase GP's question: What reason would the ownership class have to provide these necessities to workers when they no longer require their work?

Most people's existence are very strongly tied to their job. Not being able to pay basic utilities and food just the first examples.

Obviously, nobody is going to blip out of existence when their layoff notice is signed, everyone knows this and nobody claimed that. If you stepped down from your philosophical post humanist highchair a bit, you would realize that.

well i brought up the system for a reason, human existence is relative to the system in which humans exist. are there any examples of humans being systematically supported when their class of labor ceased to exist on a widespread scale? if so, did those supportive aspects spontaneously manifest? all in all, would such insights apply to a more widespread scenario, where the affected labor classes are all those involving human computer interaction?

Presumably the stress one endures when their way of life is challenged significantly is life changing. Not that you’d care though, by the sounds of it.

> trying to crack down on it will just force it underground, where it will be developed with even less care and oversight than it is now.

With way less access to infrastructure, hardware, capital, people. That’s literally what we need, it should be constrained by having way less resources

Advancing the state of the art takes so many resources that it can't happen underground, at least for now. Slap enough controls on the means and the handbrakes are on. So your doomsday scenario could be preventable. The crux is that enough people need to come out in favor to put constraints in place. It's not impossible, but public opinions form slowly.

No signs of the US or EU slowing down

Do you live in a fantasy? Amazing

Society could take control back. It's not impossible. History has examples where people took control away from small collectives, although it wasn't always strictly lawfuly or even peaceful.

To take it to the extreme, billions of virtual dollars wouldn't offer any protection against a determined lynch mob at the front door.

More realistically, there is a lot of power in showing up in big numbers and protesting. It is beyond me why especially US culture doesn't accept that as an option these days.

Society abides by a lot of rules that you also learned to follow, mostly while you were raised. Why else would you even wear a deodorant?

Some examples:

- CFCs are completely banned (Montreal Protocol)

- drag-reducing swimsuits

- some Persistant Organic Pollutants were completely banned (Stockholm convention)

It can be done.

Commercial AI labs start with the popular low hanging fruits but as competition is fierce for content they go for the long tail.